i have a 95 ex accord vtec 4 door that i am changing the drive shafts cv joints on. i am having problems again but i'm still willing to try to finish the job.

Duane in Japan told me: "Dont remove the castle nut, if you use a puller, unscrew it till its flush with the end of the pin so the tool will not damage the pin threads."

but that is what happened, the castle nut would not go back on. I had to use a rethreader on both the pin end and the castle nut to try to restore them. this was not good advice i received. I understand the reason for leaving the castle but on is to prevent the parts from violently separating, but when you use a ball joint separator it screws the threads up. I still need to separate the ball joint so maybe i should try a different type of puller. my ball joint separator has two parallel horizontal jaws, one jaw has a two pronged fork end that goes under the boot and the other jaw has a concaved spoon shape end.

my second and bigger problem is that many guys have told me that i do not need to take off the wishbone damper fork, if i loosen the lower ball joint that is all i need to do and the drive shafts will slide thru the wishbone, no need to remove it. i have a vehicle that is what you guys call a J vin made in Japan, with auto trans, with abs. is it possible that the advice i was given here is for a manual-trans, with no abs, and for hondas that were made in america? because looking at my drive shafts, i dont see how they can fit thru the wishbone i measured the wishbone diameter at its widest horizontal point, and I measured the diameters of the boot band and the abs ring and both of them are wider than the inside diameter of the wishbone, so how are they supposed to go thru the wishbone? Is there some trick to this job?

 

To separate the ball joint from the lower control arm; put upward pressure on the hub, get the biggest ball peen hammer around, smack the lower control arm where the ball joint stud passes thru it. Leave the nut on loosely in case you miss, it won't damage the threads.

If you hit it like a REAL MAN it will pop loose......LOL.

On newer Accords the inner CV joint WILL pass thru the wishbone; but not on your 95.
All you need to take out is the lower bolt thru the bottom of the wishbone, then you can jerk the wishbone towards the outside/back.

 

Duane in Japan also told you this was not the best way to do the job, didnt I. If you would have dropped the upper arm like I suggested primarily and followed the rest of the procedure for the wishbone you would be done by now.

Again there are two types of upper arms so the difficulty factor will depend on which one you have. Worse case you will need two people and a good pry bar.

I personally never do the job via the lower ball joint but I have disassembled the ball joint for other jobs. The two pronged fork is referred to as a pickle fork and it usually tears the ball joint grease boot so I dont like it either.

When you use the ball joint seperator as you did, you have to put plenty of pressure on the tool then hit the lower arm next to the ball joint with a heavy hammer and it will usually pop apart with no damage to the threads.

Sorry your threads got damaged but you need a really good tool and really good technique to use it, maybe you didnt have either. The guy who told you to do this is a shop technician and does a lot of these jobs, he probably works flat rate and doesnt have time to kill.

 

Mr. Yamada: thank you, i am going to try this asap. i talk to a few local techs and that is also how they do it too. but having never done this method and without any pics i was unsure about where or how hard to hit with the BFH. btw, thanks for the tip about the wishbone too.

 

i must say that i find your upper control arm method intriguing, and it certainly seems possible. i'm not going to attempt it for two reasons, first, i probably have the worst of the two types of upper arms, no doubt, and second, for me, its hard enough trying to do it even with pics, and i have no pics for your method. perhaps you could post them sometime.

as for the ball joint separator, i got it at Harbor Freight for $15, but it seems quite capable. i figured that the reason why the threads got damaged is because you cant put the castle nut flush with this particular tool. its curved edge that fits under the lbj pin pushes into the edges of the castle nut, which in turn pushes the threads together. about my lbj threads, no problem, i got them repaired good enough to get the castle nut back on. thanks for the help anyway.

 

Here's where ya hit it;



Grease up the lower wishbone bolt....so it will come out next time

 

Hondadude, oh, great pic. i kinda figured that is where to hit it. but of course the pic confims it now. btw, i see by the pic the vehicle is up on a lift, and a screw going up towards the hub, are you doing what i think you are doing, pushing up on the hub also? surely that is one long jack screw - whew!

i wonder why the helms manual only tells you to use a BJ separator and nothing else, when it seems clear to me that just about all the techs do the BFH method along with a puller and maybe even a hydraulic jack under the hub. i'm starting to wonder if my using just the BJ separator alone would have ever worked.

uh, i also noticed that your abs toothed wheel is farther away from the top of the LBJ than on my vehicle. I got about3/8 to 1/2 at best between those two parts.

i'm going to look at my vehicle now.

 

that's not true, i did the passenger's side and the inner cv joint housing passed right thru the wishbone [damper fork].

atoz